Carlos Ruiz Zafon Quotes - Page 5

The most efficient way of rendering the poor harmless is to teach them to want to imitate the rich.

Destiny is usually just around the corner. Like a thief, a hooker, or a lottery vendor: its three most common personifications. But what destiny does not do is home visits. You have to go for it.

Some like to believe it's the book that chooses the person.

Envy is the religion of the mediocre

In small towns, news travels at the speed of boredom.

With women, the best part is the discovery. There's nothing like the first time, nothing. You don't know what life is until you undress a woman for the first time. A button at a time, like peeling a hot sweet potato on a winter's night.

People talk too much. Humans aren't descended from monkeys. They come from parrots.

A piece of literature can be many things but first of all it must capture its audience. You need to seduce people, entice them into a world of beauty and horror, light and shadow, of passion, of romance, of mystery. That's the magic of it. Beyond that, of course, you can open a dialogue about the ideas which interest you, but first of all you absolutely must get inside people's minds.

God gives us life, but the world's landlord is the devil.

I've always thought that we are what we remember, and the less we remember, the less we are.

Man...heats up like a lightbulb: red hot in the twinkling of an eye and cold again in a flash. The female, on the other hand...heats up like an iron. Slowly, over a low heat, like tasty stew. But then, once she has heated up, there's no stopping her.

All true stories begin and end in a cemetery" - The Shadow of the Wind

Our world will not die as the result of the bomb, as the papers say, it will die of laughter, of banality, or making a joke of everything, and a lousy joke at that.

Never trust he who trusts everyone.

Old age is the lubricant of belief. When death knocks at the door, skepticism flies out the window. A serious cardiovascular fright and a person will even believe in Little Red Riding Hood.

It's hard work, writing, you know. Honestly, a fight every day against your own limitations. You have to squeeze books out of your brain, you're constantly trying to solve challenges. I think most writers enjoy the feeling of having written something, rather than the process of writing it.

Delving into the past had unveiled a cruel lesson - that in the book of life it is perhaps best not to turn back pages; it was a path on which, whatever direction we took, we'd never be able to choose our own destiny.

The fact is that nothing is more difficult to believe than the truth; conversely, nothing seduces like the power of lies, the greater the better. It's only natural, and you will have to find the right balance. Having said that, let me add that this particular old woman hasn't been collecting only years; she has also collected stories, and none sadder or more terrible than the one she's about to tell you. You have been at the heart of this story without knowing it until today.

... , listening to the storm outside as it left the city, knowing that I was going to lose her but also knowing that, for a few minutes, we had belonged to one another, and to nobody else.

Never trust anyone, Daniel, especially the people you admire. Those are the ones who will make you suffer the worst blows.

The Cemetery of Forgotten Books is like the greatest, most fantastic library you could ever imagine. Its a labyrinth of books with tunnels, bridges, arches, secret sections - and its hidden inside an old palace in the old city of Barcelona.

We are willing to believe anything other than the truth.

Human nature provides the lyrics, and we novelists just compose the music.

Men are like chestnuts they sell in the street: they're all hot and they all smell good when you buy them, but when you take them out of the paper cone you realise that most of them are rotten inside.

There are no second chances in life, except to feel remorse.